Jharkhand Health Minister Hemendra Pratap Sahi resigned from his post Thursday to facilitate his legislator son Bhanu Pratap Sahi's entry into the cabinet.

Jharkhand Health Minister Hemendra Pratap Sahi resigned from his post Thursday to facilitate his legislator son Bhanu Pratap Sahi's entry into the cabinet.

Bhanu Pratap, now out of jail, will take oath as cabinet minister at 7 p.m. Thursday.

He had been facing arrest warrants in three cases. When his name was put up for a minister's post last year, Governor Syed Sibte Razi raised objections.

To placate him, his father was made a cabinet minister though Hemendra Pratap was not a legislator.

Bhanu Pratap surrendered in the Garwah district court last year and got bail in all three cases last month.

He is an expelled legislator of the Forward Bloc. He had supported Madhu Koda in forming the Jharkhand government in September 2006.

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No written test for alternative medicine doctors

Ranchi, Feb 8 (IANS) The Jharkhand government has decided to appoint ayurveda, homeopathy and unani doctors without written examinations and only on the basis of an interview.Clearing the way for the appointment of nearly 300 doctors, the cabinet Wednesday evening decided that the government would advertise for the posts and directly call the applicants for interviews.

The interviews would be held at the division level. The exemption from written examinations would be applicable only for doctors appointed on contract.

The government had earlier appointed nearly 2,000 allopathic doctors on a similar arrangement.

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Jharkhand 'forgets' the hungry

The government has a programme to tackle hunger, which is called the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS).

But like children themselves, ICDS thrives only where it receives attention and care.

Jaago Devi lost her husband to starvation in 2000. It is 2007 now and three things seem to have changed. She is poorer, having pawned her land to raise her five children.

She is even thinner than before and is lucky if she can light the chulah even once a day.

"There is a saying, where there is solid flesh, it is only there that the knife actually works. What can I expect? The government has done nothing for me," said Jaago Devi, Resident, Kusmitaand village in Palamu.

Underutilised funds

In Manatu block, 16 out of 21 posts are vacant at the primary health centre.

"I went there. There was no food. It is too far away, I cannot keep going there repeatedly," said Rajmunia Devi, resident , Kusmitand village, Palamu.

While any anganwadi services a village of 1000, Jharkhand seems to have forgotten that hamlets of 150-300 are allowed to have their own Mini-AWCs, an essential need in Jharkhand's hilly and cutoff tolas or hamlets.

But the amnesia is chronic in a state unable to play caretaker.

Last year Jharkhand used only 22 per cent of its funds under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Why would job creation not be a priority in a state where 46 per cent earn less than Rs 12 a day?

Six years and five governments later the same inaction replays itself.

While a decent Rs 2.70 meal is what the state promises a malnourished stomach in the anganwadi, district officials have acknowledged a Rs five crore scam directly related to the food for the children in the anganwadi.

Citizens are now using the courts and RTI to unearth just what is happening in Palamu's 1400 anganwadis.

"In 330 centres there has been a scam of Rs 5 crore. The officials are corrupt and misuse their powers. Nobody dares to raise a voice here. The measure of the scam is much larger in Jharkhand. A rigid enquiry can prove a scam of upto Rs 200 crore," said Rajmuni Mehta, PIL applicant, Palamu.

Approximately 70 per cent of Jharkhand's anganwadis have never seen what a weighing machine looks like. It is through a growth chart kept every year for each child that his or her health levels are mapped.

"I have been working in this anganwadi for the past seven years and there has been no sign of a weighing machine. We have never weighed the children," said Lalita Misra, anganwadi worker, Leslieganj Block.

A weighing machine was brought from an NGO to check. After weighing a child, the NDTV team was stumped as there was no clear age record for him.

Without a simple weighing machine and such basic record keeping, it is near impossible to track a child's growth or to know when plain hunger tips over into serious malnutrition.

On following the child home, it is discovered that his parents are landless daily wagers, with a hut on the edge of the village.

Literacy rate

Faraway from a so-called historical hunger spot lies the coal capital of India. Dhanbad may have a literacy rate higher than the national one, but when it comes to children under six, it remains a sin city.

Anganwadis are mostly locked and opened when they hear of the media. With no toilets, lights and children sitting on the edge of the angeethi with expired medicines for company, the anganwadi worker and the people are clearly at war.

One in nine children die before they are five, a figure that has remained unchanged since 1961.

For now the state seems content to let its future starve. And as one leaves the famished roads of Jharkhand, the word pang refers not just to the hunger that is felt but to the guilt that is evaded.

KOLKATA (Reuters) - Twenty people were injured on Wednesday in clashes between police and activists opposed to a proposed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the communist-ruled state of West Bengal.

Four policemen, including an officer, were among the injured near Nandigram, about 150 km south of the state capital, Kolkata, where the SEZ is being planned.

Meanwhile, a police intelligence official was reported missing from the area and is suspected to have been killed in the clashes, Raj Kanojia, a senior police official said.

Protesters dug up roads and attacked police with iron rods and stones.

The Nandigram SEZ project has become a flashpoint between the state's long-ruling communists and farmers who say their prime agriculture land is being taken away. Six people have died and about 100 hurt in protests over the project in recent weeks.

In the meantime, farmers opposed to a controversial car factory near Kolkata broke part of a fence around the site on Wednesday. Two police jeeps were also damaged near the site at Singur. Police fired teargas shells to disperse the farmers.

Tata Motors started work to build its factory in Singur last month to make what the company claims will be the world's cheapest car for 100,000 rupees.

But the project, which has become a test case for the communists, has been mired in trouble with some farmers saying the government took their land against their wills. The government says it has compensated most of the affected farmers.

There have been regular protests in Singur for the past few weeks.

On Wednesday, tens of thousands of Muslims belonging to the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind group, headed towards a village near Singur, planning to hold a rally against the project later in the day.

A large police contingent was deployed but activists said they were undeterred. "This is just the beginning of (a) huge protest against the communist government's police," Siddiqullah Chowdhury, general secretary of the group, said.

Kendrapara: Here is some good news for those still finding safe drinking water a mirage. For a change, the help to water-deficient coastal villages in this part of Orissa is poised to come from an unexpected quarter.The Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO), under whose stewardship the much-acclaimed Wheeler's Island missile test range centre is in operation, is seriously thinking in terms of extending a helping hand in solving the acute drinking water crisis in some seaside of villages of Kendrapara and Bhadrak districts.

`As a part of our civilian welfare plan, we are planning to distribute iron testing kits and iron removal apparatus in places of human habitations where safe drinking water is scarce,' said a DRDO official on Tuesday.

`We have learnt that several villages located on the seaside are hit by abnormally high content of iron in groundwater,' the official said.

Devoid of alternate source, the poor people in places of Kendrapara and Bhadrak districts are forced to consume water detrimental to human health.

`Such people-friendly schemes were earlier launched in chronically water deficient areas of Assam. Now it's our endeavour to reach out to the coastal villages of Orissa,' sources in DRDO said.

The water testing kit can ensure a qualitative determination of iron contents in water. Its operation is simple and trouble-free and semi-skilled workers can handle it without any hindrance.

The kit provides water-testing facility for both phisico-chemical and bacteriological parameters. It's simple to ascertain the presence of iron contents through this kit.

'We will provide the kit free in water scarce areas. Besides the kit, an additional set of iron removal instrument would be donated to the villagers.'

The iron removal apparatus would help the villagers to draw bacteria free water from contaminated water sources. The handling of this apparatus is as easy as that of the test kit. On trial basis, three villages are being picked up for this novel experiment. The local gram panchayat body would keep custody of these set of instruments, the sources said, adding that the scheme is planned for launch during coming summer season.

Five security personnel including a civilian were killed, on Thursday morning, when a powerful landmine bomb exploded while they were trying to defuse it at Bhairamgarh in Bijapur about 430 km from the Chhattisgarh capital.

According to the Dantewada superintendent of police Om Prakash Pal the casualty resulted owing to the clever ploy of the Maoist who adopted a second mechanism by planting a concealed explosive within the bomb which was first defused by the bomb disposal squad. "While the security forces were examining the already defused bomb after disconnecting it, another hidden bomb exploded", said Pal.

Four among the dead are from Nagaland Armed Police, which included its superintendent of police. An Assistant inspector of police of police P Markam and a civilian were also killed. Among the ten injured, the condition of four are stated to be critical and they were flown to Raipur for treatment.

The IGP in-charge of anti-Maoist operations Girdhari Nayak told Hindustan Times that this is an unusual entrap by the naxals.

It may be mentioned here that a two-day national conference to discuss the Maoist menace jointly organised by the Delhi based Institute of Conflict Management (ICM) and the Government of Chhattisgarh began in the state capital on Thursday. The theme of the seminar is 'Maoist Insurgency: Assessment of Threat & Doctrines and Strategies of Response'.